Saturday

Ratzinger came increasingly to see these and associated developments (decreasing respect for authority among his students, the rise of the German gay rights movement) as related to a departure from traditional Catholic teachings. Increasingly, he turned away from the theologically liberal thinking of his early career to the more traditional elements of his Bavarian Catholic upbringing. In 1969 he returned to Bavaria, to the University of Regensburg.

So he was a liberal, in that he didn't want to be a Nazi, but participated unenthusiastically. Of course, he was not a member of the white rose society, just a follower in his own (Hitler Youth). Then he was a chair at a known dogmatic university. There he observed the beginnings of German gay rights, thus began to cling to the more conservative views of his religion. Ideas, I presume, he didn't have when he became chair at a known dogmatic university?

Californians have a reputation of being rather laid back in their life approach. On the flip-side, New Yorkers have a reputation of being overly aggressive. Women are allegedly the adult representations of sugar and spice and everything nice. Men are the adult representation of snails and puppy dog tails. I think that's the way those sayings go.

In relationships today, all that "sugar and spice and everything nice" crap seems to have been flung over broads' shoulders, out the nearest window, flushed down the drain. Women seem to be all about taking an aggressive stance. "Getting their man" so to speak. Men on the other hand seem more laid back. Men are taking the role of the court-ed while women are stepping up and willingly taking on the role of the court-er. Society is changing. Gender roles are changing. Stars are re-aligning with newly discovered moons.

Songbird shares her feelings about a coworker's good news regarding her pregnancy:

I felt such a rush of mixed emotions. I’m so happy for her…who knew that the person sitting right outside my door has been going through the same things I’ve been through. (I don’t know her very well. We only became “neighbors” a few months ago.) Seeing someone else report a successful IVF cycle makes me very hopeful. I also found out that two other women in the office are pregnant. They are all due around the same time that I would have been due. Anyhow, while she was talking, I had to go get some tissue to keep from bursting into tears. I told her that I can relate to what she’s been through.

The bill would make it a federal crime to transport a minor across state lines to avoid parental-notification laws. "The people of this country don't want the government intruding" in family disputes, Slaughter said.

As Taranto observes, "In fact, this bill would not intrude into family disputes; it does precisely the opposite: It would punish those who intrude into family disputes by helping girls procure abortions without their parents' knowledge."

Friday

To put it mildly, I despise people who wound ban books because something about a particular book disagrees with their worldview. It is the most cowardly, chickenshitted thing someone could do, in my humble opinion. One suspects that I'm not the only person who feels this way. But am I? In this particular case one would think that there would be a few courageous souls in the Alabama legislature who would show up to decry this action, just on the principle of the thing, even if their worldview agreed with that of the would-be banner.

Apparently not.

Editor's Note: When the time for the vote in the legislature came there were not enough state legislators present for the vote, so the measure died automatically.

{emphasis mine}

They didn't have a quorum. That's why this bill died. Not because anyone had the guts to stand up and decry book banning, but rather because this was the solution that, I suspect, would ruffle the least amount of feathers.

Thursday

Ded Space directs our attention to a case in Viginia where the ACLU has filed a petition for a witch who was told she could not deliver the invocation at a Board of Supervisors meeting because she is not a Judeo-Christian.

It is clear to me that Adams wasn't saying that Christians are fascists. Nor is he saying that conservative Christians are fascists (unless radical has suddenly become a synonym for conservative, which these days may be the case). He is saying that fascism will come to us in a Christian disguise.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Righties cannot read. And they were definitely AWOL the day God handed out critical thinking skills.

The fact is that the "Christians" Hedges and others write about in the current issue of Harper's are not Christians. Sure, they wave their Bibles around and talk about JEE-zus, but what they are doing is anti-Christian. Instead of submitting themselves to the will of God, as Jesus taught, they have hijacked the trappings of Christianity to further their own agenda.

This morning as I was driving my 15 year old stepdaughter to school, the local NPR station played a story about pending legislation in Texas that would require parental consent before a minor can obtain an abortion. I explained some of the details of the legislation to her and she asked "You mean my parents will have the right to tell me I have to have a baby I don't want?"

Tuesday

Like abortion and "reproductive rights" this is a coming-of-age issue for feminists. Somewhere along the line, women are going to have to start taking responsibility for their behavior. Unfortunately, human nature did not change when Sex In The City came along. While simply wearing a low-cut blouse is not an open invitation to rape, women do have to face the fact that the increasingly in-your-face behavior of young females today is contributing to the increase in 'date rape' reports. And even more disturbingly, some of what is reported as date rape is really consensual sex when a young woman simply got herself intoxicated or exercised bad judgement.

The LA Times has a wonderful commentary today by Jack Hitt, “Jesus Was No GOP Lobbyist.” Hitt, points out that the media, television particularly has played heavily into the selling of Christianity as a Republican PAC.

When the pope died, CNN's Wolf Blitzer introduced former Clinton aide Paul Begala and right-wing pundit Robert Novak this way: "Bob is a good Catholic; I'm not so sure about Paul Begala." At the bottom of the screen, CNN ran an informative factoid for the audience: "Many Catholic doctrines are conservative."

Here lies the problem with media hacking for right wing, rather than reporting unbiased news. Who is or is not a “good Catholic” is not to be judged by the likes of Wolf Blitzer, nor any representative of the media for that matter. This is not reporting the news; it is shoving personal opinions down the throats of Americans.

Broadcast media prefer to cast Christianity in the role of "right-wing values PAC" because it is so neat and tidy. They do not much like even to say the name Jesus on air because then we might have to talk about his ideas. "Evangelical Christianity" is much simpler because you can treat it as just another special-interest group, like the Teamsters or the neocons.

Monday

Marian points out that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice missed the opportunity to draw attention to the rise in racist violence in Russia. Aside from reports of continued attacks on Africans and ethnic Turks, US white supremacists such as former KKK/Nazi leader David Duke has been actively proselytizing there -- even selling racist tracts in the Russian Parliament building.

Sunday

Last week's winner in the Favorite Philosophy & Religion category is Searching for My Truth. If you haven't visited that blog yet, please head over and say hello. This week we're voting in the Arts & Entertainment category. Please vote for one of the following:

A poll is closed after the winner is announced and the new poll for the week is blogged. Typically, a poll is closed Sunday at approximately noon central time. Nominees are selected from blogs listed in the BbW directory. So, please get your blogs listed.

Saturday

I thought I would introduce a few of the newest (and interesting) additions to the BbW directory. Thanks to everyone who's helped us go from ZERO to 248 blogs since we launched on March 8, 2005! Remember, if you have 1 blog or 10 blogs, you can list all of them -- absolutely free.

Mardi Gras Lady: Learn about Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama. I never knew they had that kind of fun in Alabama. Apparently they do.

Chalk Dust: If you love art you'll love this blog (or you'll be green with envy).

LightUpTheDarkness: Two former Kerry campaign workers write this blog. That alone should make it interesting.

Thursday

If you are a Firefox user and you can see this post, please let me know. I can't seem to get to this blog using the Firefox browser. I get redirected to Blogger's login page. If others are having the same problem, let me know. Thanks!

April 23, 2005

Firefox is working fine for me again. Thanks to those who responded:

Alana, who also had a bit of trouble getting redirected to Blogger's main page, but can now get back to BbW using Firefox just fine.

Planet Moron who surfed in from Blog Clicker (send me your referral code if you happen to stop back by).

Sunnye Tiedemann who's enjoying reading all about what the women bloggers are doing. Stop by and say hello.

Wednesday

Cynthia Daniels discusses Pope Benedict XVI's political actions during the 2004 US election:

Could this be the reason for Ratzinger's election to pope? Did the new pope accord a selective advantage to Bush (hmm) and this is his reward? Isn't it against the Church policies or against one of God's mandate to not to interfere with politics? Isn't that a sin? This is another example that the Catholics don't always practice what they preach. You have the infamous child molestation cases by many priests and they are protected under the banner of the Church. Now this new Pope is said to have intervened in politics; I wonder what will be next.

Just a gloss of their findings: unmarried, low income, undereducated teenage black mothers are the most likely to give their children what the researchers label "distinctly" black names (Unique and its variants - Uneek, Uneque, and Uneqqee - serve as their example of such a name); resumes with "white" names glean more interviews than those with "distinctly" black names; but the fact that children with "distinctly" black names fare worse in life (and the data supports this) has more to do with their socio-economic status than their names. This may seem obvious, may even make those of you out there who have named your baby Nautica, LaDante, or some ghetto shit like that sigh in relief. Don't exhale just yet, though, 'cause you know I'm about to light into you. I gotta do it.

The rest of the entry is engaging, sometimes funny, and sometimes too damn sad to look at.

I don't mean to minimise the vast gulf between making people join the Hitler Youth and thinking about making them join the Boy Scouts. But, given the deeply statist climate of opinion throughout and just after the war, I'm sometimes amazed that we in Britain did as well as we did in maintaining our liberties. Rather puts the present generation to shame, doesn't it?

UPDATE: Interesting Jerusalem Post story which I found via Random Jottings, Ratzinger a Nazi? Don't believe it. He wasn't a hero. But (have I mentioned this?) he was only 14.

ANOTHER RANDOM THOUGHT: Why is everyone so much more worked up about his having been in the Hitler Youth than in the Wehrmacht? Maybe it's because he eventually deserted from the army, or maybe because everyone knows that you couldn't say "no thanks" to an invitation to join the Wehrmacht. Maybe it's just the vivid mental image that the words "Hitler Youth" call up.

My note: Links in Natalie's post were not included on purpose. You have to visit her blog to follow the links.

1. Bush's call to disarm Hizbullah2. Bush's main spokesman with a WTF as the preface.3. The Jewish Double Standard4. Assad's life-span5. The cease fire

Meryl also has an interesting item on 9/11 and how she thinks Israelis should handle academic Israelis who deal with Palestinian businesses. I was shocked to read that considering it's supposed to be a no Israeli bashing zone. I thought the same would go for Palestinians.

"Creating Their Own Image" is a comprehensive history of African-American Women artists. The book begins with an examination of Western images of Blackness from the ancient Greeks through the Renaissance which is filled with postive images and on to the Slave trade when the first negative images begin to appear.

The narrative proper begins during the Middle Passage with the emergence of slave art, including domestic-oriented work such as quilts, dolls and textiles, as well as gardens and burial sites. Farrington then leads us through the splendors of black women's art during the Reconstruction, the post- Reconstruction backlash, a new flowering during the Harlem Renaissance and the WPA, what she views as the setback of Abstract Expressionism, and black women artists' love-hate relationships to the Black Power and feminist movements. The second half of the book is devoted to contemporary art, covering abstraction, conceptualism, outsider art, postmodernism and post-Black art.

Mud_Ink tells us why we should pay attention to art history and theory:

theory----->a summation of all kinds of shifts in thinking about art that have been taken place since the enlightenment.------->can take different form/position/methods/practice.--------->some not naturally combine, some overlap confusingly, others simply irreconcilable.------------> theory has, and always has had, it place.---> we get engage in them whether we like it or not.this brings us back to the the beginning of this writing , unless you can articulate something that don't exist, we are already taking a stand in what we express.

postmodern theory in all shapes and forms warns us-----> nothing is absolute;that truth is always provisional and partial.'reading' of a work by any individual will eventually be revised by other readers.---------->all positions in theorectical approaches are 'open and equal'. gives us a conceptual frameworks of 'histories for history, truths for truths.----------->theory frames the mindset of present time.

Tuesday

The Blue Bus takes the time out to remember today is the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City terrorist attack.

With a little help from satire, Moxie reminds her fellow Republicans that April 22 is Earth Day. She says:

Traditionally, Republicans do a line of coke off Condi's ass -- but as I understand it, she's not able to make the requisite trip though red states due to her new responsibilities as Secretary of State (Sorry Barbara Boxer, but you lose).

Heart of Canada comments on women in academia, particularly women at Harvard.

For MNF's management, most of whom are white, adding a black face to the line up is important, but when there's an underlying hope that that blackface will fill a quota without alienating the aging white liberals who make up the core of their listener-sponsor base with controversial and radical politics, there's something wrong here that's indemic of deeper social problems within the white liberal community.

Most people don't mean to be racist. WMNF's decision-makers didn't fire Connie because she's black. They fired her because she's black and talks about racism. Anyone who thinks quotas in and of themselves sufficiently addresses contemporary racism is fooling themselves about the nature of the world we live in today, a world where the effects of slavery are still being felt and struggled with.

I agree, I don't think most people mean to be racist. I think they do really dumb things that are racist in nature.

Elaine Meyer writes on the exploitation of ethnic groups for entertainment:

Using a Native American symbol for mere entertainment is similar to the use of African American actors or actors who donned "blackface" as pure entertainment in old-time minstrel shows. Maybe the audience of the minstrel show gained a greater knowledge of the existence of African Americans this way, much as Tolles claims Illinois fans gain a greater knowledge of Native Americans because of the Chief. But is exploiting an ethnic figure for pure entertainment value really the best way to gain such knowledge?

Sunday

Last week's winner for Favorite Blog in Family & Parenting is Scribblings. If you haven't checked out this blog yet, please swing by and say hello. This week we're voting in the Philosophy & Religion category. Please vote for one of the following:

Friday

I'm a bit surprised there's been no notice of this student's post on the William Kristol pie incident at Earlham. I'm sure it's because she's no hot shot political blogger and she doesn't "hang" in the same blogger circles as other popular female bloggers. But, that's what Blogs by Women is all about, bringing you as many great finds as possible:

William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and the US' "neo-conservative price" spoke on campus today. First up was the 3 o'clock with the Politics senior seminar, where we got to ask questions and have a fun discussion about Social Security reform (among others). There were loads of interesting comparisons to the Clinton health care fiasco and certainly a whole lot of things that are going to provide food for thought over the next few months. I got to ask the classic Joyce question: "What should be the response of liberals to the neo-con movement when we agree on so many of the ends, but none of the methods?" Yeah, this is really something that I struggle with and probably the main reason why I've shifted away from American political parties (nuance is not a bad thing, people!). He didn't really give me a great answer, except to say that that position/struggle is a valid one and implying that it might be a much healthier kind of political discussion. Which, come to think of it, makes it a great answer. Hearing that your struggles are probably better as struggles than they would be as resolved political positions is kinda nice.

Thursday

At the outermost fringes, the recently sentenced Eric Rudolph spoke proudly of bombs he planted at an abortion clinic, a gay club and a park during the Olympics in Atlanta - - his point? “defense of the unborn.” Rudolph is of course the most extreme of extremists, but too often our political leaders have not been a calming influence; it would be reassuring if people like DeLay and the president spoke more often in kinder, gentler terms and encouraged the faithful to behave in more principled ways.

A right wing extremist they call him. Not a terrorist. If Rudolph's last name was Muhammad or he was a practicing Muslim, he'd be called a terrorist. Ain't that right? If Rudolph was a Black man, La Shawn Barber would have called him a "thug" -- the term she always uses to describe Black criminals -- when she spoke of him in her post today. But, since Rudolph is a white man, he's called an extremist. It's not too harsh, but it packs enough punch to make a statement of disapproval.

Kit Jarrell: A JAG officer I consulted about the case, who requested anonymity for obvious reasons, had this to say about Pantano’s decision to waive his Article 32 hearing: “In the present case, Pantano’s attorneys have savvily–in my estimation–realized that a 32 is going to do nothing but delay the case…The defense has arrived at an unusual but I think perhaps effective strategy–taking the initiative. They seem to believe the government does not have the evidence it needs for a conviction, so [they’ll] waive the 32 and demand a trial.” Is an offensive approach effectively what you’re trying to achieve by moving directly to the trial phase?

Charles Gittins: I’d rather not comment publicly about our strategy. Your former JAG seems to be knowledgeable and has identified a good reason to waive the Article 32. I don’t disagree with him/her.

KJ: There’s been a tremendous amount of blogging done on the case, from both sides of the issue. What effect, if any, do you think this has had on how the American people view this case, and how do you respond to accusations that the amount of “internet press” being given to Pantano’s situation is simply a by-product of his defense team and his mother “trying the case in the media”?

CG: I think people are interested in the issue and honestly concerned, as they should be, that military personnel are being prosecuted for decisions they are required to make in the heat and stress of a dangerous situation. How many of the young men coming back from Iraq in flag-draped coffins are in those boxes because they waited too long to take decisive action and prevent detonation of a car bomb or an IED? There is no way to know because the military does not investigate those deaths in the same way they do allegations of murder by a Marine or a soldier. What we know is that Ilario believed he was in danger and he needed to act when the Iraqis failed to comply with his order to stop. What if they were intent on taking Ilario’s weapon and killing him and as many other Marines as they could before they martyred themselves? How do we know that was not their intent? Iraq is full of Iraqis willing to kill themselves in order to kill as many Americans as possible — and that is a FACT. Just ask the guys who were at Abu Ghraib last week when a car bomb was detonated there.

There are so many reasons to pretend to be talking to someone on your cellphone. Just think about it a little and you'll get many ideas!

But James E. Katz, a professor of communication at Rutgers University, says his classroom research suggests that plenty of the people talking on the phone around you are really faking it. In one survey Dr. Katz conducted, more than a quarter of his students said they made fake calls. He found the number hard to believe. Then in another class 27 of 29 students said they did it.

Right Wing extremism has taken over all the main stations now and there is no place except for public radio and KCET and the like to go anymore for relief from this mass racial and ethnic hysteria that permeates the news now. Lou Dobbs support the Minute Men Project, a group of independent militia suppposedly guarding the borders against the wishes of the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS). The arrogance and lack of understanding on this show about the economic forces has already been pointed out by many of the experts on immigration who come on the show and point out the consequences that would befall us if all these undocumented workers should go away all at once much of our agricultural industry would collapse and many of the other services we take for granted would come to end too.

This seems more like a neighborhood watch, on a much larger scale. I have to disagree with the term vigilantes. One only needs to refer to the words of George Felos to see this is not true. I mean, HOW DARE THEY! Food and water? Do they not know how BEAUTIFUL AND PEACEFUL it is to be thirsty and hungry. It's NATURAL! Ask Terri Schiavo.....er... I mean Felos... I mean have you heard about what is like to live in Mexico? Who would "want to live that way?"

Case and point:

These citizen patrollers are setting up camp at a BIBLE COLLEGE, and giving people food and water. It's very clear. These are NOT vigilantes. They are RELIGIOUS ZEALOTS!

I am the strongest proponent of Title IX I know (keep in mind it ONLY has to do with educational institutions), I have spent the past ten years either working in women’s sports or researching women’s sports. However, why we would we want to rely on men to support our women’s sports leagues in the first place? Yes, in many historic battles for women's rights, men have served as allies but women were not solely dependent on these men, especially for ten years without gaining anything for either gender in return.

I was born in the Title IX era. No one ever suggested that girls shouldn’t play sports, so I grew up playing track, volleyball, basketball, and softball. My dad and I played catch in the backyard (and one memorable time in our elementary school playground when I launched a borrowed softball onto the building’s roof). My high school softball team won the state title twice.

I come from a state where our sports stars are women. Rebecca. Nykesha. Jen. Shea. Sveta. Sue. Diana. Ann. In our little corner of the world, these are the one-named wonders.

DeLay is now urging the GOP to blame democrats for his lack of ethics.

[. . . ]

His private remarks to Senate Republicans were in keeping with the response frequently offered on his behalf by House Republicans: Blame the Democrats and occasionally the news media for the scrutiny he faces. House Republicans intend to follow the script later in the week, hoping to showcase passage of bankruptcy legislation and estate tax repeal as a counterpoint to Democratic charges that they are merely power-hungry.

This is abuse of power, by the GOP, should they keep to the "script.". Plain and simple. People need to start calling these people out and making them take responsibility for the scandals as well as the lying and covering up afterwards

Since the invasion of Iraq, the US government has allocated $19 billion for reconstruction and related projects in Iraq, although much of it has yet to be spent. This figure is more than the combined annual budgets for the National Cancer Institute, Amtrak, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, Federal Air Marshals, operation of the National Park Service, Homeless Assistance Grants, the Superfund Hazardous Substance Cleanup, Home-Delivered Meals to the Elderly and youth employment and training programs."

and she writes on Wal-Mart pharmacists who are refusing to disperse birth control pills.

The corporation is under contract to purchase land off Arkansas 112 west of I-540 for a possibly 130,000-square-foot Sam’s Club, said Bob McAdam, vice president of corporate affairs.

Now the exact location hasn't been released, but it's speculated that it will be some property that the Sierra Club claims is wetland "containing rare species". And we all know what that means.

Wal-Mart is planning a statewide takeover of California. As if its regular sized megastores aren’t big enough, Walmart’s newest reign of terror are their twice-as-large Supercenters. The second largest employer in the nation next to the Department of Defense, Wal-Mart has 1494 regular stores in the US alone. In addition to this, 1386 of these Supersized consumption centers exist in 43 states – but none in California. Yet. Walmart headquarters is planning to expand its empire into California this year, choosing 40 locations in their expansion plans.

We say “yes”. It’s better for a family to be able to afford what they need and want and get it in the shortest amount of time so they can spend more quality time together.

When I was a kid growing up in New York City, we had to go to many different stores for everything. It took all day. Many times we could not go to the park or a movie because there wasn’t time.

Now with Wal Mart, not only is there time left over, but there is money left over too. Children and families throughout the country are benefiting from this.

But what about the stores that get “put out of business”?

Decades ago, when the automobile was first introduced, there was tremendous opposition from the railroad owners and workers. Their arguments were essentially the same.

“The automobiles will mean the end of the railroad.” “All of the railroad workers will be out of work.” “The shops, towns and companies that service the railroad will be out of business.” “It will be a disaster.” Etc. Etc.

This reminds me of conversations I had as an MBA grad student. I was the anti Wal-Mart student listening to future CEOs of America who said Wal-Mart was doing everything a business had to do to make money and keep consumers happy by providing low prices. All the other things (gender discrimination, race discrimination, ect) were irrelevant. Part of me agreed. So many people shop at Wal-Mart knowing full well the company discriminates on a regular basis. Why? Because it's the best deal in town.

Tuesday

Cat provides parents with several handy translations that will help when talking to our children:

DUDE - n. I had to include this one because apparently it's meaning has expanded. No longer is dude exclusively used to refer to a male. It is now used to refer to any person, regardless of gender. For instance, "Look at that dude's skirt!" Evidently, this word also refers to one's mother, as I am called dude quite frequently, i.e. "Dude, can I have a fruit roll-up?"

TIGHT - adj. Apparently this is a term that means good looking. It is used much like "phat" was in the 1990s. For example, "That dude is tight!" I also believe it doubles as a positive adjective meaning "cool," i.e. "That song is tight!" (Ed. Note: A parent dancing around waving their hands over their head and shouting, "Look at me! I'm tight!" causes a child to go into seizures. I know this from experience.)

WHACK - adj. No longer reserved for striking someone or something, this term I believe signifies something that is not quite normal or right. For instance, "My sister is whack." The object or person in question is often something you don't particularly enjoy, i.e. "That math test was whack" or "This homework is whack." Whack can also be used to express embarrassment, such as "Mom, don't kiss me in front of my friends. That's whack!"

Monday

Have you ever noticed that in the Bush Administration, the only way to get a job promotion is to bungle our national security? As under secretary of state for arms control and international security for the past four years, Mr. Bolton has achieved little. In fact, we secured more nuclear materials in the two years before September 11th than in the two years after. North Korea and Iran are now burgeoning nuclear states. This record earned John Bolton a nomination to the UN?

Much of the feminist blogosphere sounds about the same when talking about Dworkin -- except my comments, of course. Here's what the feminist 'phere has to say about Andrea Dworkin and her death:

It's all over the feminist blogs but nowhere does Google News even seem to acknowledge the death of Andrea Dworkin. The death of a controversial person doesn't usually merit silence, even in the mainstream press.

Andrea Dworkin has recently passed away (b. 1946-2005). Farewell Andrea. You inspired this young woman and others to question and protest sexist social-gender roles/constructions, male privileges, systematic discrimination and oppression, misogynist stereotypes, homophobia, racism, and patriarchal institutions. To fight and change a culture that glorifies rape and the pornographic hypersexualization of women and even girls.

Sunday

HR Lori gives some practical advice for both HR professionals and employees:

Most employees in California are at-will (public employees are excepted and have a whole other set of rights) and in fact, the only state that is not at-will is Montana. This means that your employer can terminate your employment at any time, for any reason provided it does not violate any federal, state or local laws. This doesn’t mean that they can fire you for blogging. What it does mean is that they can fire you for blogging on company paid time or for revealing company secrets, or representing yourself as an employee of a company and acting in a manner which would violate the company’s policies. If you can stay away from all of that, then you can blog to your heart’s content. If not, the company can justify a termination. Take the case of the flight attendant for Delta who was fired for posting pictures of herself in uniform in a manner considered to be suggestive. Although I might necessarily take the same actions as Delta’s HR department (I’d probably issue a warning first), they were justified in invoking their at-will clause, provided that they invoke it consistently to anyone else who does the same (or similar) thing. Consistency is the most important thing in HR. All employees should be treated the same according to company policy and procedure. Any failure to do so is a failure on the part of the company and the employee should not have to suffer for it. All the employee needs to do is abide by company policy and we’ll all get along.

That's pretty good advice. Go read the rest and start a discussion with Lori, especially if you blog at work or blog about your boss!

Who has time to worry about an environmental study about exhaust leaking into school buses when the news is riddled with “A Culture of Death, Not Life?” But that’s another story altogether, isn’t it.

Maybe it’s time we started paying more attention to the culture of life, particularly when it involves the wellbeing of the children of this country, all of the children of this country. It seems to me there is a problem with finding a story like this from Reuters, buried on the Environment News page on MSNBC, when clearly this story should be front page news. Why? Because it affects millions of children across this country who ride school buses every day.

Teresa Heinz Kerry is in the news once again as she continues her work as a philanthropist and environmentalist. Sandy recently posted a piece about Teresa addressing 250 doctors and scientists on the impact of environmental problems on human health, at a conference at the Herberman Conference Center in Pittsburgh.

Teresa is one of our country’s leading environmentalists. “In September 2003, she was presented with the Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal for Humanitarianism for her work protecting the environment, promoting health care and education and uplifting women and children throughout the world.”

Last night, Teresa announced “a gift of $4 million to the endowment that helps fortify Pittsburgh's lively, provocative hub of contemporary art and popular culture” at the “Spike-a-Delic Gala, dinner and dance party held at the South Side Works, a new development created by Warhol board member Damian Soffer.”

Please visit LightUpTheDarkness to visit the live links (omitted on purpose here) in the article.

Saturday

i am so angry. i read about this yesterday in the globe and mail. this group that gets donations from BMO tells women that they'll get breast cancer if they have abortions. this is not true. so i advise everyone to go in to a bank of montreal near them and cut up their cards. i will be.

When affinity is an affront

Abortion rights soon will be crushed in the United States, and this is the source of the revived aggression of the anti-abortion movement here.

by Heather MallickApril 2, 2005

I got out the big scissors this week and cut my Bank of Montreal Mosaik (sic) MasterCard in half. This was after visiting the branch to settle any outstanding bills on the card.

"May I ask why you're killing your card?" the teller asked politely, and I explained that the bank had an anti-abortion affinity Mosaik MasterCard, and I wished to express my anger with scissors and, more important, with my money.

With the passing of His Holiness Pope John Paul II, millions are speculating on who will be ordained the next pope.

Could the next Pope be African? Cardinal Francis Arinze, a 72-year-old Nigerian who served as a close advisor to Pope John Paul II, may be considered. Arinze is the fourth-ranking Cardinal in the Vatican and is the president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.

Becca comments on a 16 year old Guinean girl who is a suspected terrorist:

According to a government document provided to The New York Times by a federal official earlier this week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has asserted that both girls are “an imminent threat to the security of the United States based on evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers.” No evidence was cited, and federal officials will not comment on the case.

Sandy at LightUptheDarkness has a post on Teresa Heinz Kerry's recent speech at the Herberman Conference Center in Pittsburgh:

Teresa continued with her familiar theme that everything’s connected at a conference at the Herberman Conference Center in Pittsburgh last night. The historic conference brought together the top “science and experts on the impact of environmental problems on human health... Key issues to be discussed by participants will include the impact of environmental factors in breast cancer; the harm caused by mercury from power plants on the brains of children; and the need for hospitals to stop contributing to health problems caused by pollution by switching to green energy and adopting other green policies.”

Not everybody thinks JP2 was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Sorry, but I have a problem with all things Catholic after 40 years of their brainwashing, so I'm not unbiased. I don't see how any modern female could possibly accept and justify the Catholic Church's view of woman as second-class citizens.

For everyone, the issue of stem-cell research is deeply personal and fundamentally moral. We each dread getting a call from a doctor with the results of a diagnosis that makes our heart sink, or the day we say goodbye to a loved one.

I'll never forget a woman I met last fall at a town hall meeting on stem-cell research. She stood up, her frail body shaking, and pleaded for her government to embrace stem-cell research. It was the moral clarity of her message that will stay with me forever.

“It's too late for me,” she said, “but we need to do this for those who still have hope.”

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Tuesday

So, mrs. witchtrivets and I did our taxes this evening. To digress just a bit, yes we had to do them separately even though she was my legal dependent last year, because the crimes against nature (CAN aka s0d0my) laws are still on the books here in NC despite the US Supreme Court ruling them illegal, and therefore she cannot legally be my dependent because our relationship violates state laws. We could probably try to get away with it, but I would rather not have the 1RS all over me. Same as vampires -- you don't want to invite them in your home.

Anyway, as we were figuring out what we paid and what refund (thankfully) we are getting back I had the unoriginal thought that everyone must have when paying taxes. That is, what are we paying for? (For the sake of brevity, I am glossing over the marginalization of gays and other minorities in the country.) In my personal experience, I live in a town where the water is contaminated, there is no public transportation and basic federal services such as reliable mail service are pretty much non-existent. The police will not protect us from hate crimes and the state govt. is pushing for another anti-marriage amendment on top of the existing DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act).

There are some interesting bits in this article and I want to learn more (one web press story does not the full story tell!) First is the catalyst - the tsunami. The role of catalysts in change is incredible. From an activist perspective, what kinds of positive human catalysts can we deploy to stimulate change?

Second is the cost issue. Lowering the license fee and allowing outside funding is part of the control, or loosening of control. When I read this, I thought about the work Jock Gill is proposing around women in rich countries funding their sisters in the 2/3rds world through direct, personal microfinance. Would funding a radio station be a good investment?

Third is the provision for advertising. I'm no fan of radio ads, but I'm a big fan of finding mechanisms for sustainability and local ownership. External capital can start something, but it can't sustain it.

How Some Folks Have Tried to Describe CommunitySearch the web and you will find dozens and dozens of discussions on the definition and existence of online communities. In 1999 I collected a few that struck me as thoughtful and useful. A recent thread on Corante's Many2Many group blog prompted me to update this article. (Read the comments to the blog post -- that's where it gets interesting.) I've interspersed the old with the new.

Cliff Figallo, in his book Hosting Web Communities, described a set of attributes captured the essence of "connection" as manifest in community in terms of relationships. He uses words like "feeling part of a larger social whole," "web of relationships," "an exchange...of commonly valued things," and "relationships...that last through time creating shared histories." (p.15)

I'm reading this book right now entitled "The End of Poverty" which is written by Jeffrey D. Sachs, an economic advisor to governments and the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

One of the first sections in the book talk about the country Malawi in Africa - one of the most AIDS/HIV ravaged countries in the world. The CIA world fact book ranks Malawi as number 8, with 14.2% of the adult population living with AIDS or HIV.

[. . . ]

Why not set up a NPO that provides people a mean to adopt an AIDS/HIV patient? We have programs that adopt impoverished children in Africa (albeit mainly run through crazy Christian missionary programs), so why not this? The way I see it is that we have two options - we can give up on an entire generation of individuals who could have otherwise so easily been saved - or we can help save them.

Vision America's mission is "...to inform, encourage and mobilize pastors and their congregations to be proactive in restoring Judeo-Christian values to the moral and civic framework in their communities, states, and our nation."

Judeo- my ass. This is about setting up a particular flavor of evangelical Christianity as the National Religion -- mandatory for everyone. And any Jew or Roman Catholic who allies with these guys thinking they won't be rounded up when the time comes is delusional.

The organization's core values extend almost solely to sexual issues and their right to force their religion down our throats.

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Monday

Nicolas Kristof writes in today's nytimes.com about the murderous aid policies, supported by the president of the united states, which heartlessly condemn so many women to death. a policy of recommending abstinence and 'being faithful' to women in southern africa does nothing to stem the tide of HIV infection. men work away from home, return for visits and refuse to use condoms.

In this article I look at five lies the church tells women, inspired by the book by J. Lee Grady called Ten Lies the Church Tells Women.{1} I'm not saying all churches say all these things, but there are certain pockets of Christianity where these lies are circulated.

Lie #1: God Created Women as Inferior Beings, Destined to Serve Their Husbands.The first lie is that God created women as inferior beings, destined to serve their husbands. Those looking for Scripture to back up their beliefs point to Genesis 2:18, where God makes a "helpmate" for Adam. "See?" they say. "Helpers are subordinate to the ones they help, which proves women are here to serve men." This ignores the times in the Psalms (10:14, 27:9, 118:7) where God is praised as our helper, and He is certainly not inferior or subordinate to us!

Lee Grady points out, "It is a cultural bias, not a spiritual or scientific principle, that women were 'made' for the kitchen or laundry room. This is the most common form of male chauvinism, a burden placed on women by selfish men who want someone to wash their dishes."{2}

This view that women are inferior to men is not biblical, but it has infected the church from the beginning.

Just when you thought the Federal Election Commission had it out for the blogosphere, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors took it up a notch and announced yesterday that it will soon vote on a city ordinance that would require local bloggers to register with the city Ethics Commission and report all blog-related costs that exceed $1,000 in the aggregate.

Blogs that mention candidates for local office that receive more than 500 hits will be forced to pay a registration fee and will be subject to website traffic audits, according to Chad Jacobs, a San Francisco City Attorney.

One day at lunch during my second week Geneviève stood up and announced she was leaving. Geneviève was an electroshock success story. She had been in the hospital for five months. I'd watched her leave for the shock treatments, twice per week - the shock people left in a single-file line, grumpy and nervous. Their empty and unmedicated stomachs made them snap sluggishly at our Daniel, always on shock-patient duty. They came back subdued. Sometimes they were brought back in wheelchairs or on guerneys, before the sedation had worn off : skin papery, eyes vacant, lips thick and mumbling unintelligibly for water. Geneviève was a woman transformed by the electric currents shot through her cerebral cortex. At lunch this day, she had rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes. She had styled her hair and put on a tasteful floral blouse, a powder-pink cardigan ; her glossed lips shone even in the yellow dining-room lamplight. "Je vous encourage, je vous promets que vous allez guérir ... fin, que c'est possible". (I encourage you all, I promise you will get better. Well at least, it's possible.) She smiled. I still had stitches in my left wrist and a vaguely puffy face from the things I'd swallowed and the things they'd given me in the ER to counteract them : her promises felt slim and distant, like day-old blades of grass between the fingers that you can't pull on too hard. They could break.

Blue touches blue, touches black, then expands,All the tears and the years in the palm of my handDo you think you can tell me what's wrong and what's wronger?I need to be stronger.I need to be stronger ...

But the question of whether or not I could be cured was less important than the fact that a space had just opened up at a better table. One with light. One closer to the large double-glazed shatter-proof window that overlooked the courtyard behind the building, where the kittens lived, and the small field between our building and the next.

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Friday is Tom DeLay's birthday, so perhaps yesterday's headlines are merely early salutations. Hmmm, or maybe not so much.

His hubris is truly something to watch alone while pre-medicated, but the fallout from his most recent public travesties is rapidly becoming a team sport. And Republicans, Texans, the home district, and colleagues are piling on.

According to several major print media sources yesterday, the conservative movement seems to be on the wane, and guess who is leading the descent? Literally stealing the spotlight away from Denny, Dubya, and Rick, the face of the Party (through his own badly timed exploits and well-constructed campaigns by several groups) is now also widely recognized as the Poster boy for unethical, greedy, and hypocritical behavior

Sunday

I decided to remove the blogroll that was listed in the left sidebar. At this point, I don't think I will maintain a blogroll, nor will I use anyone else's blogroll. If you want your blog listed on Blogs by Women, please add your link to the directory.

Incomplete Blogs by Women directory submissions -- or submissions containing false information -- will most likely be rejected. If it's too much trouble to provide the necessary information when you complete the directory submission, then it's way too much trouble for me to include your blog in a directory that I spend my time, money, and energy promoting. I'm sure you understand.

This essay reminded me of a few essays in Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities. The premise was that in a culture that isn't virulently homophobic, homosexual activities are not frowned upon. They are seen as "play" -- it is private and personal, but play nonetheless.

This leveling system is not a new concept. The school system I attended as a child in Georgia used a very similar system. Students were tested as early as 1st grade to determine the track the student would follow. Most white students were placed on the College Prep track, while most Black students were placed on the General or Technical track -- meaning they may or may not attend a Jr. College or a technical school. It was very obvious the school system was segregating the schools from the inside since segregated schools in the south, by law, could no longer exist.